Midsummer Marriage: Melon and Cheese

by Regina Schrambling

on 07/30/10 at 11:55 AM

Normally I think cheese goes with everything, even sugar. The best Southwestern/Mexican dessert, after all, is capirotada, a cinnamon- and clove-spiced bread pudding with both raisins and Colby Longhorn or Monterey Jack. But until this summer I never quite got the weirdness of combining it with melon. Even though I don't love cantaloupe unless it's well salted, or at least draped with prosciutto.

Maybe my resistance was weakened by all the "rose wine" in Istanbul. There it started to make sense that honeydew-type melons are often teamed with the salty local "white cheese." The nuttiness and the fruitiness harmonize, even more so when licoricey raki is flowing. (As the website notes, it doesn't "meter" what you serve that Turkish tequila with.)

Then the other night we trekked to a lavish picnic hosted by Greek wine importers and promoters at Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and the first thing I tasted was a wedge of perfect watermelon topped with feta plus fresh dill and mint. It was wildly good. And it looked gorgeous*. Then again, the two very different rosés being poured, from Kir-Yianni and Semeli, could have weakened my resistance.

A really amazing watermelon really needs nothing. But this is a pretty good way to dress it up for company.

Oh, yeah...I first had this a Jean Georges as a sort of Lincoln Log construction of batonettes of red and yellow watermelon, crumbles of feta, drizzled with olive oil and topped with fresh-cracked black pepper. Served it recently at a party as watermelon balls in the watermelon shell, tossed with Bulgarian feta from Fairway, mint leaves, olive oil and pepper. Divinely addictive!